Classic Poem

Vague Mystery hangs on all these desert places!
The Fear which hath no name, hath wrought a spell?
Strength, courage, wrath — have been, and left no traces!
They came, — and fled; — but whither? Who can tell?

We know but that they were , — that once (in days
When ocean was a bar 'twixt man and man),
Stout spirits wandered o'er these capes and bays,
And perished where these river waters ran.

Methinks they should have built some mighty tomb,
Whose granite might endure the century's rain,
Cold winter, and the autumnal winds, that boom
Like Spirits in their purgatorial pain.

They left, 'tis said , their proud unburied bones
To whiten on this unacknowledged shore:
Yet little, save the rocks and worn sea-stones,
Now answers to the great Pacific's roar!

A mountain stands where Agamemnon died:
And Cheops hath derived eternal fame,
Because he made his tomb a place of pride:
And thus the dead Metella earned a name.

But these , — they vanished as the lightnings die
(Their mischiefs over) in the affrighted earth;
And no one knoweth underneath the sky,
What heroes perished here, nor whence their birth!